Action Around Apalachicola Bay-- Part 10: Action After the Battle of New Orleans

Not knowing that the Treaty of Ghent  had been signed in December, Admiral Cochrane moved his forces back to Mobile and Prospect Bluff.  Just after his marines captured Fort Bowyer in a second attack at Mobile Bay, Cochrane got word of the Treaty of Ghent and began to withdraw from Mobile.

However, he left Nicholls and Woodbine  in command of the black Colonial Marines and Choctow Indians at the fort at Prospect Bluff.

The War of 1812 on the Gulf of Mexico began and ended at Apalachicola River.

But the departure of the Royal Navy did not end  the conflict with the blacks and Seminoles.  Attempts to recover Forbes & Company's losses during the three successive wars occupied Forbes and the Innerarity brothers for the rest of their lives, and led to the second largest Spanish  land grant in Florida's history.

Called the Innerarity's Claim of Searcy's  1829 map of Florida, the grant extended from Apalachicola to the Choctawhatchee River.  The story of how that land claim was settled  and the gradual decline of the John Forbes and Company's trading firm in the Territory of Florida is another story in itself.

--Brock-Perry

Action Around Apalachicola Bay-- Part 5: The Creek War and the Battle of Horseshoe Bend

Angered that they were turned down by Spanish governor Gonzalez Manrique. they turned to John Innerarity at the Forbes store  in Pensacola.  Innerarity feared that an Indian war was about to begin and showed them only empty barrels and turned down their request for guns and gunpowder

However, Governor Manrique decided to help the Creeks and  provided Chief Peter McQueen with 1,000 pounds of gunpowder.  An attack on Fort Mimms caused the United States to declare war on the Creeks.

Alarmed that the Creeks would become a dangerous threat if the British armed them, Andrew Jackson's Tennessee volunteers marched to the Alabama River from Nashville and defeated the Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on March 27, 1814, and forced the Indians to ceded half of their territory to the Americans.

With some justification,  hostile factions among the Creeks and Seminoles blamed Forbes & Company for their lack of firearms and gunpowder that led to their defeat and loss of land.

--Brock-Perry

Action Around Apalachicola Bay-- Part 3: Why Was Forbes Mad?

At Prospect Bluff, George Woodbine conscripted John Forbes' agents, William Hanby and Edmund Doyle, along with 25 black slaves, to help build and manage their fort.  With Doyle and Hanby preoccupied, the British and their allies looted the Forbes store.

The former slaves were recruited into the Colonial Marines, and 300 of Forbes' cattle were confiscated to feed Creek and Seminole Indians., who were starving because Andrew Jackson's  forces had burned their villages and crops during the Creek War of 1813.

Woodbine's actions at Prospect Bluff convinced Forbes' partners, James and John Innerarity, the firm would fare better with the Americans than the British.  For the rest of the war, they aided Americans by sharing crucial information they gleaned from their vast trading network that extended from Amelia Island to Pensacola and New Orleans.

--Brock-Perry

Action Around Apalachicola Bay, Florida-- Part 2: Part of a Three-Pronged Attack By the British

Continued from  September 16, 2020.

The British advance on Apalachicola Bay, Florida, was the first part of a three-pronged British attack on the Gulf of Mexico coast planned by Admiral Alexander Cochrane.  He would next hit Mobile and then new Orleans (which resulted in the famed Battle of New Orleans).  From new Orleans, his command could then control  navigation on the all-important Mississippi River.

He sent Navy Captain Hugh Pigot and  Marine Captain George Woodbine to the Apalachicola River to train Creek Indians and black Colonial Marines, expecting that these allies would then prevent American reinforcements coming from Georgia on the Old Federal Road and block them from helping protect Mobile and New Orleans.

Without permission from the neutral Spanish government, who owned the area, the British began constructing a fort  25 miles up the Apalachicola River less than a mile from the store at Prospect  Bluff that was run by the merchants and Indian traders of John Forbes & Company.

Although Forbes and his partners James and John Innerarity were British subjects, conflict was inevitable because British officers could augment their  pay by looting Forbes' business and selling the plunder as prizes of war.  (Kind of a land-based privateering scheme.)

--Brock-Perry